Anyway, Glastonbury was fantastic. I just got back a few hours ago, had a bath and have now emptied the car.

Here's a synopsis of my week at Glastonbury.

Saturday:I arrived, set up the tents, unpacked my stuff, had a few chilled ciders and had a relatively early night. There was some confusion as to whether I was on the early shift or not, and in the end I wasn't technically on it, but if there was spare jobs, I would be offered them, instead of working later.

Sunday:Had my first Oxfam stewarding shift, from 8am to 4pm. I spent about 2 hours sitting in the admin office, and I helped them out with a few computer stuff, then got sent to enforce a one way system at a junction near a bridge. Pretty boring work, but met a really nice guy (hey Nick!), who happened to be camped right near me, with a bunch of friends. After shift he introduced me to his mates, and we had a pretty heavy drinking session round the campfire.

Monday: Second shift. I was officially 'floating', which from what I can tell means playing scrabble and drinking tea all morning. At about 11 I was sent to cover people who were doing the same job as I had been doing on Sunday on their lunch breaks, but then I was let off shift a little early (I technically hadn't had a lunch break, so they just let me off a half hour early). Queue another drinking session round the campfire.

Tuesday:Things got a bit more interesting on Tuesday. I turned up at 8am to see if I could work another, final, shift. I was told by my supervisor that there was no shifts available for me today, so to just have the day off.

Like any responsible festival goer with nothing to do all day, I cracked open the first can of Cider.

Shortly after finishing, one of the Oxfam organisers tracked me down and said "Actually, it turns out we do have a shift we need you to do, can you get ready for work now?"

I replied "Sure, Iam very happy to work now, however, in case it matter, you should know that I have just had a can of Cider. I am sure I am perfectly fine to work, but I thought it would be best to be honest."

She said "At 8 in the morning?!?!"

I just laughed. In the end, they sent me away for a few hours to 'sober up', and I started at 12. It did become a running joke on camp that I turned up for work drunk and got sent away...

This time my shift was greeting and directing all pedestrians entering the site, for 8 hours. It was really dusty too, but at least no rain.

Wednesday:Barely got out of bed. Just relaxed all day.

Thursday:I went to see Santogold in the afternoon, really good live, you should all check out her album.

We made an interesting discovery on Thursday.

Oxfam staff have a slightly different wristband to punters.Press have a slightly different wristband to punters.Sometimes security staff struggle to tell the difference between press and oxfam staff.If you are friendly and confident with security staff they will let you anywhere if you have a wristband that they assume is press.

Even into a private press party.With KT Tunstall playing to a room of about 100 people.And a free bar.

Me and my parents all snuck into this party in the hospitality area. They had sofa's, hard floors with carpets, nice toilets. I spent all night hanging out with people from Q Magazine, The Guardian, and the BBC. Brilliant night.

Friday:I woke up with an awful hangover.

Still managed to catch most of Kate Nash and The Subways at the Pyramid Stage. Kate Nash was great, although The Subways didn't really impress me much.

Then I shot off to The Park, where a long time favourite of mine, John Cale (from The Velvet Underground) was playing, and after him a "Special Guest". But I also caught most of Edwyn Collins too, who despite struggling to even get on and off stage because of some pretty serious brain damage, was still incredibly full of energy, and a real inspiration.

John Cale was really great, the only dissapointment being that he didn't play his cover of LCD Soundsystem's "All my Friends" which would have no doubt gone down a treat with the festival crowd.

Then after that, the "Special Guest" ended up being Franz Ferdinand, who I saw at Leeds before and loved live. They played a lot of new material, and a few classics. It's amazing how many of their songs still sound fresh even now.

After Franz finished, I headed back to the Pyramid Stage for Kings of Leon, who are so much more mature that when I saw them on their Youth and Young Manhood tour.

Back to camp, relaxed by the fire for a bit, then off to bed.

Saturday:Got up and ready in time to head for the Pyramid Stage, to see Martha Wainwright, who was pretty dull for the most part, but saved by a guest appearance of the superbly talented Shlomo. Shlomo is a fantasticly technically accomplished beatboxer, he does things his voice than no human should be able to do.

He provided the beat, whilst she was singing and playing the guitar, and the end product was fantastic. I made a note to make sure I caught his set later.

Then I headed back to The Park for Kool Keith (Founding member of the Ultramagnetic MCs, and also know as Dr. Octagon) and Kutmaster Kurt, who put on a great set. It was a little rude for me, considering the time of day and audience, but it wasn't a bit deal.

Then the next two hours was the single most entertaining performance I have ever seen at a music festival - Shlomo presents "Music through unconventional Means".

First it was just him on stage, he started off pretty simple, and without a repeater (so just him and a mic), but he just built it into something incredble. He was beatboxing classic like Seven Nation Army, and Outer Space, but doing the entire song, scratching, and remixing it at the same time. I actually saw a member of security turn around and clap!

Then he introduced his Vocal Orchestra. A team of seven beatboxers, who almost looked like they didn't think they deserved to be there, but that couldn't have been any further from the truth. They worked really well together, and with Shlomo coordinating the effect was incredible.

Then Shlomo started bring on the special guests to perform with him. Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Martha Wainwright, The Reverend, Lemn Sissay, DJ Yoda, and many more all turned up. Playing covers from a wide range of genre's, including classics by Bob Marley and Stevie Wonder, all with insane beatboxing going on.

It lasted two hours, but was interesting and exciting for the whole time. If you ever have the chance to see Shlomo, you owe it to yourself. He had a really endearing charm too. He is obviously a bit of a nerd, and almost looked like he thinks he doesn't deserve to be on stage at Glastonbury, but when he opens his mouth, magic happens.

They were OK, but I don't really think they are a festival band. Although Jack White turning up to play a song with them was pretty cool.

After that was MGMT, who where great, but the most interesting thing was a little scrap between a member of the band and security.

Towards the end of the set, they decided to go stage diving. I thought this would be as good a time as any to jump over the barrier and head off to the Glade, my next destination, since there was no way I could have walked through the crowd. As I got over and ran down the side (in a sailor hat and tail coat if you are looking out for me on the coverage ;D) one of the security staff mistook a member of the band for a punter trying to get back on stage. The security guard grabbed him and threw him to the ground pretty forcefully. No idea what happened after this, but it got a laugh out of me.

After that, I avoided the immature Jay-Z backlash/anti-backlash and headed to the Glade to catch Squarepusher. I would have quiet liked to see Jay-Z, but Squarepusher trumped him, sorry Jigga. He was obviously having a lot of fun, and really interacted with the, very intimate, crowd.

Then back to camp for drinks and campfire.

Sunday:I didn't really see many bands on sunday, but the ones I did see where fantastic.

I spent most of the morning in the Leftfield tent, listening to, amongst other people, living legend Tony Benn talk about how broken the world is, and what we should do to fix it. It was a bit heavy going, but interesting.

First band up was Crystal Castles, one of the most exciting bands I have seen in a while. I love their album, but live, I don't think it is much of an exageration to say they are the blueprint for the future of electronic music, and in 10 years time they'll be listed alongside Daft Punk and Aphex Twin.

The Verve set was exactly what I expected. Very Good, a collection of hits, mostly from Urban Hymns, and a few new, decent tracks.

They got to Bittersweet Symphony, which I assumed was the end, and I was overall pleased with the performance.

Then they played one more new song.

They dropped the phatest rave song I heard in a long time. Completely out of the blue. Nothing like anything else they have ever done. The crowd were going insane. I am now really excited for their new album.

Monday:Packed up, got home, ready lots of email and spend an hour or so on my RSS reader, then posted this.

There is a tonne of Glastonbury coverage on the BBC iplayer, if you want to check it out.

I just got a PAL-release copy of Brawl, and I thought I'd let you know that nothing from the US game is compatible. You cannot use your previous save, you will get a new Friend Code, and you can't even load custom levels between each version of the game.

I can't fathom who thought this was a good idea. Either it's just a byproduct of the Freeloader, or it's someone at Nintendo who thought 'importers? F them one more time!'

I just found out about these, and they're brilliant. They turn your PS3 shoulder buttons into concave shapes rather than convex ones. One of my main issues with the PS3 has been solved - I can't believe I didn't think that someone would have made them already. According to a friend, GAME are supplying them free with PS3s and controllers, but that's just hearsay.

I was looking at the improvements planned for Burnout Paradise earlier (£28.99 delivered on PS3 and 360), and what they're doing to prolong the life of the game is something that I can't remember seeing in any other game. Not only is the game extremely solid in itself - I recommend picking up a copy if you can, it's possibly my most-played game this year so far - the way that Criterion are committing to their game and their audience is just astonishing. You can read all about the changes and listen to their weekly podcast at the Criterion website.

As well as listening to the fans and working in modes that should have been in the game originally, such as online Road Rage and Marked Man events, there are also a host of features that most developers simply wouldn't bother with after launch. Motorbikes, for example, being added into the mix. Extra challenges for online play. And possibly my favourites of the new features - completely rebooting the ranking system to make it fairer based on community response, player-created or suggested liveries and routes, and the ability to assign special cars to whoever they feel deserves it.

The sense of community is something that I wish more developers would embrace. There is only the most thin veil of support for so many games, but the few who do support it do it so well that I'm surprised that no-one puts the effort in otherwise. For example, as well as Criterion, Bungie support the Halo 3 community constantly with their DoubleEXP Weekend events and the Bungie Favourites playlist, where they post their favourite films, snapshots, gametypes or level variants, downloadable straight from the game. Their integration with their website is also stellar - you can earmark any film or gametype from the website for download, and it'll automatically fire itself over to your Xbox the next time you boot up Halo 3 (£17.99 delivered).

And yet, some of the biggest games of this generation completely half-arsed its community features. As you'll know if you used the Rockstar Social Club in the first few weeks, it was criminally slow to update your statistics, and still doesn't register songs tagged in-game correctly. It's disappointing, especially since all it really is is a glorified leaderboard which displays information that is already available in-game n a different format. For something calling itself a social club, it's surprisingly closed off to anyone else. There's no forum for discussion about anything in-game, and as excited as I was about it when it was announced it just feels very hollow.

It seems like this sense of community is so very important now for gaming - not that GTA IV (£37.83 delivered on PS3 and 360) needed it to sell any copies, of course. But the reason I love my Xbox 360 so much are the community features that the others simply don't have. It's the first console I've owned where I don't simply go straight into the game as soon as I boot up - I'll spend five minutes seeing what my friends are doing, how they've progressed in certain games, whether they've beaten my high-scores or are further than me in the game I'm playing. And it's something that the PS3 can't quite match (at least until firmware 2.40 and Home are released), and the Wii will apparently never do.

I like that I can get together with my friends for Rock Band, but why can't I post a Drummer Wanted ad online and play with someone I would never get a chance to otherwise? We're coming up fast on E3 2008, and I really hope that instead of the hard and fast 'more immersion, better graphics' angle that we always seem to get, we also get a healthy sprinkling of 'community focus'.

For those of you near one of the Gamestation stores listed below, they're having a Brawl contest on June 28th (day after release). First prize is a 40" Samsung HDTV, with a DivX DVD player and 5.1 Dolby Digital speakers. Runner-up prize is an iPod nano. There's one of each prize per store.

I have a busy ten days ahead of me. I'm going to be stewarding at Glastonbury festival for Oxfam.

That means there is going to be some downtime for the bargains, as I won't be around to post. However, I have recruited a capable team of SavyGuesters, who will be posting some (hopefully) interesting articles for you guys to read.

I'll be back on the 30th, although I will probably be out of commission for a day or two...

SavyGuesters, Assemble!

Since I won't be here to moderate comments, unless you have a google account your comments won't get posted until I get back, but don't worry, I will go through them all soon after I do get back.

The opinions represented by the various SavyGuesters in no way represent those of SavyGamer, and should only be treated as novelty posts.

If you were ever going to buy a game just from my recommendation, make it this one. Not only is it dirt cheap at release, but it is bloody good.

I don't care if you like(d) Space Invaders. This is not the same game as Space Invaders. It is pretty, it sounds fantastic, it is a really modern design. I cannot sing it's praises highly enough. I imported it, and I am thinking of rebuying the UK release, it's that good.

SavyGamer is now free of the .blogspot shackles, as I have managed to secure a .co.uk domain for SavyGamer. All old links should still redirect correctly, so don't worry too much, but you might want to switch to the new address in your bookmarks, since it will be a little faster.

You can now contact me at LewieP@savygamer.co.uk if you even want to email me with requests, or indeed just to say hi.

Me and a few other British folk who are going to be going to PAX this August (including my Mum!) thought it might be a cool idea to all meet up before we go. We decided that a good venue for said meet up would be Omega Sektor in Birmingham, Europe's largest LAN and Gaming Centre. Then we thought, "why not invite a whole bunch of people, the more the merrier!".

All the readers of SavyGamer are officially invited to the 'Pseudo-pre-PAX Birmingham meetup 2k8'.

The vague itinerary so far is:

1. Meet at Omega Sektor around 11:00 a.m. have a mooch around, see what's what and where it is.2. Play various games for around an hour or so.3. Have lunch somewhere - probably not in Omega Sektor, but depending on prices.4. Play for 4/5 further hours.5. Find a pub.6. Drink alcohol until it's time to catch our train home.

We only officially started planning this a couple of days ago, but already there's about 6 confirmed attendees, and if we get a big group of us together, it might even be worth trying to get some bulk discount, and split into teams for some big games.

If anyone in the Birmingham area, or anyone who fancies a trip to a cool LAN centre to play a bunch of games, then let em know either by email or a comments here, and I'll keep you posted as the plan develops.

APZonerunner (resident Brummie) has given a great (albeit slightly outdated now) write up of Omega Sektor here and here if you want to read more about it.

It would be great to meet any/all of you guys face to face, and I'm sure it'll be a wicked day.

Update: It's probably useful if I tell you the date isn't it. It's on Saturday the 26th of July.

If I have done this right, I should have updated to a new RSS feed. The new feed can be found here, and it is also on the right sidebar. This feed should have slightly faster performance, but the main reason I have switched is that it will give me a better idea of how many people read SavyGamer just by RSS, which beforehand I had no idea about.

I guess it's market research to some degree, but I hope no one minds. If anyone has any trouble with the new feed, or if anyone would like to not be counted, send me an email or comment here and I'll see if I can keep both feeds going, one completely anonymous, and one which gives me some pretty basic information (literally just numbers of subscribers and clicks, that sort of thing).

Cheers!

Update:Or possibly I completely misunderstood how this works. Don't change anything yet, gimme a minute to check I have done this right.

Update2: Yeah, ignore me, I have updated the old address to forward to the new feed, you don't need to change anything at all. If any of you would prefer to stay completely anonymous, I recommend checking out ANObrowse, which includes and anonymous RSS reader.

Let me know if any of you experience any problems with the changeover.

Origin of SavyGamer

The idea behind SavyGamer is simple: Everyone has a budget and the best way to push that budget is to shop smart.

There are tonnes of pricebots about (froogle, kelkoo, you know them all) and I'm not about to substitute them, they do a fine job. I post what I think are quality deals, good games/gaming related equipment that is a good deal at the asking price.

Where applicable, I will post referral links. These links will lead to me getting commission from the retailers, often varying between 1 and 10%. There is no change in price for you, but if you prefer not to use referral links then you only need to browse the homepage of the retailer and search for the item.

If you ever want to submit a deal, or request a good deal on a specific game, email me at LewieP@savygamer.co.uk, and I will do my best to help you out.